Yezhov sent for Shpiegelglass, who had just returned from Switzerland after successfully arranging the assassination of KGB defector Ignaz Reiss, and asked if Shpiegelglass's Mobile Groups could handle the assignment. In the past, such assignments were handled by foreign nationals, who were members of the Communist Party of their country and associated with the Comintern; the Soviet Government could then deny any responsibility. Shpiegelglass acknowledged that the task could be done but that it would take at least three months of planning because of the strict personal environment surrounding Miller and because the vigilant French police made such an operation fraught with danger. Shpiegelglass suggested several possible scenarios for the kidnapping, but in the end Yezhov wanted immediate action. He proposed that Miller be lured under a suitable pretext to a house on the outskirts of Paris, where he would be drugged and then taken to a Soviet vessel in one of the French ports for delivery to the Soviet Union.

Shpiegelglass acceded to Yezhov's demand that immediate action be taken and proceeded to Paris, where he contacted General Nikolai Skoblin, the KGB's informant in the ROVS. Skoblin had commanded the famed Kornilov Division during the Civil War and had earned the distinction of being a ruthless but brave leader. His division had won many battles against the Red Army and was dreaded by the enemy because of its reputation for hanging or shooting captured Communists on the spot. In 1921, Skoblin had married the well-known Russian folk singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya. Soon after, they moved to Paris, where the General became one of the directors of the ROVS. It was in Paris in the late 1920s that Skoblin had been recruited by Shpiegelglass, with the help of Nadezhda, into the ranks of KGB informants. With Skoblin now in place, the KGB was able to know every move of the ROVS.

Shpiegelglass met Skoblin and a plan was soon conceived to lure Miller into a trap. Miller was to be told that two officers of the German General Staff attached to the German Embassy in Paris were interested in establishing communication with the ROVS as a means of securing information on the Soviets through the ROVS's intelligence-gathering apparatus. The Germans were prepared to pay for the information, which would appeal to the financially strapped ROVS and at the same time further its cause against the Soviets. Miller would be told that Berlin had authorised the contact with him and that it should be carried out in great secrecy so that the French Government did not learn of the liaison.

With a suitable plan now in hand, Shpiegelglass arranged to rent a villa in the environs of Paris, where Miller's meeting with the two Germans was to take place. Skoblin made his preliminary approach to Miller and found the General receptive to the idea of meeting the Germans. He also gave his word that he would tell no one. Skoblin left with the notion that he would make the final arrangements with the Germans. In the meantime, Shpiegelglass was in contact with Yezhov, who made arrangements for the Soviet merchant marine vessel S/S Maria Ulyanova, so named in honour of Lenin's sister, to make for the port of Le Havre, where it would be in position to take on the unsuspecting and unwilling passenger. The date of the operation would coincide with the arrival of the Soviet vessel at Le Havre. All the pieces were now falling into place.

The technique of "The Trust" had been re-created to combat the Trotskyites in particular, but Stalin's enemies in general. White Russians were again used to spy on both anti-Bolshevik and Trotskyite agents and at a given order to kidnap them or kill them. Sometimes kidnapping proved more effective, especially when it was a case of obtaining information. There was the case of General Eugene Miller, former chief of staff of the Czarist Fifth Army, who had gone to live in Paris. He was chairman of the Union of Russian ex-Combatants, an anti-Bolshevik White Russian organisation that had been founded by the exiled Grand Duke Nicholas. General Miller had been advised by the Union's secretary, Lieutenant-General Skoblin, that the best means of ousting the Soviet regime was to back Hitler and encourage him to wage a "liberating" war against Russia. At Skoblin's behest Miller agreed to meet two German secret agents to discuss plans. On 22 September 1937 General Miller set out to meet the Germans at a cafe on the outskirts of Paris. He was never seen again.

For a long time the Soviet Intelligence had marked down the Union of Russian Ex-Combatants as a dangerous group. It was perhaps one of the strongest remaining White Russian organisations with a membership approaching 80,000. Seven years earlier the Russians, disguising themselves as French gendarmes, had kidnapped the former head of the Union, General Kutyepoff. No trace of him had ever been found.

It was the same with General Miller. Inquiries by the French police, prompted by strong representations from the Union, revealed that Miller had gone to Le Havre. There the trail ended, but coincidentally a Soviet cargo ship, Marya Ulyanova, left Havre the night he arrived there.

Vast sums were spent by the Soviet Secret Service in carrying out these kidnappings and killings. The organising of the quest for Ignace Reiss and his murder, it has been estimated, cost not less than £20,000, while Innostranny Otdyel (the dreaded Executive Branch for Terror and Diversion) spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on similar killings and kidnappings during the 'thirties, many of them carried out in distant lands.

Almost always there is the sinister figure of a "White" Russian among the men controlled by the Innostranny Otdyel. In the case of General Miller it turned out to be Lieutenant-General Skoblin, who had posed as a right-wing reactionary, sympathetic to Hitler and anxious for a "liberating" war against Russia. The two "Germans" who Skoblin had arranged should meet Miller were Soviet agents as indeed was Skoblin himself. He denied any knowledge of a plot and indignantly defended himself before a committee meeting of the Union, but shortly afterwards he disappeared from Paris and later was heard to be in Moscow. The interesting fact emerges from this story that Skoblin had been a friend of Sidney Reilly and an active Soviet agent from a date shortly after Reilly was arrested in Russia.